Case: I considered the Corsair 550D (almost as good as the R4, but just a bit noisier and airflow a bit worse) and the NZXT H2 (airflow doesn't seem as good as the R4)CPU heatsink: I considered going passive with the Silverstone Heligon HE02, but the sheer size and weight worries me, and although it will cool a 95 W CPU like my Phenom, it just doesn't cool it well. I'd rather use one more fan than slowly cook my CPU.Heatsink fan: the one included with the Cooler Master 212 isn't great, I was considering these alternatives. CA_Steve advised that I should probably listen first.Rear fan: I saw this on sale and seeing as it was rated so highly I now have one. Depending on system noise and temperature, I may or may not use it.Motherboard: I would have preferred the ASUS M5A97 R2.0 but it looks like ASUS removed the core unlocking feature from all their R2.0 boards, and I will not be giving up a perfectly-unlockable CPU core just to go with ASUS. Too bad too - the ASUS board has three system fan headers, the Gigabyte board has only two.Power supply: I was also considering the bequiet! Dark Power Pro 10 but it's not a hybrid design and there's a report or two of coil whine. The Corsair RM power supplies are hybrid designs and would probably run fanless for most idle loads for me, plus there are efforts to control coil whine with these. I also considered a fanless Seasonic X-series, but there are way too many reports of coil whine for me to be comfortable with it.

If it would make a big change, I'd consider downgrading the video card to one of two other passively-cooled cards I have: an NVIDIA GT520 (29W TDP) or even a passively-cooled NVIDIA 9400 GT (50W TDP). To be honest, I'm not really using the GT640 to its full capacity anyway.

Nothing has been bought yet so I'm wondering what everyone thinks!

Thank you.

Last edited by Fraoch on Wed Nov 20, 2013 1:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

As specified, the PSU is overkill for your system draw. Figure 95W for the CPU and 50W for motherboard, fans, drives (unless you have tons of HDDs). Drop to the 550W or even the 450W. Still won't have fan ramp unless you add a graphics card of note.

As specified, the PSU is overkill for your system draw. Figure 95W for the CPU and 50W for motherboard, fans, drives (unless you have tons of HDDs). Drop to the 550W. Still won't have fan ramp unless you add a graphics card of note.

I would go lower if I could but the RM550s seem to be hard to find around here. I did find one retailer though, thanks for prompting me to check. I can't find the RM450 in stock anywhere though.

It was on sale for a crazy deal - not much more than the board I posted above. Lots more expandability.

From a cooling/silence perspective, it's the same. It's the same 4 fan headers - CPU, SYS1, SYS2 and PWR. CPU is PWM, SYS1 is voltage controlled but SYS2 and PWR just seem to be power and RPM sense. Kinda basic.

I'll be relying on the R4's fan controller or a bay-mounted fan controller.

Although I just realized - the R4 only has 2 X 5.25" bays. I was planning on reusing my optical drive even though I rarely use it, only leaving one slot for either a fan controller ora hot-swap bay, but not both! I should either get an external optical drive for the few times I do use it, or should I go with the Fractal Design Define XL R2 - the R4's bigger brother? The XL R2 seems to be the same as the R4 but larger, with more 5.25" bays (4), more expansion slots (9), more included fans (3), etc. The price difference between the R4 and the XL R2 is smaller than the price of an external optical drive (which are still surprisingly expensive), plus there would be other benefits...

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